Keith Poston and NC Teaching Fellows were mentioned in a Salisbury Post op-ed about the former program:
State lawmakers have finally taken a bold step toward addressing the looming teacher shortage in public schools. The Republican supermajorities in the House and Senate worked with Democrats to create a scholarship program to encourage bright high school students to enter the teaching profession.
Students in the top 20 percent of their high school class can apply for a scholarship of up to $7,500 a year for their four years in college if they agree to spend at least five years as a teacher.
The bill passed the House and Senate nearly unanimously and was signed by the conservative Republican governor with great fanfare.The program will gear up this year with the first scholarships awarded for the 2017-2018 academic year.
But there’s a problem.
Bright high school students in North Carolina won’t have access to the program. It was created this year not by the N.C. General Assembly but by the conservative Republican Indiana House and Senate and signed into law by Gov. Mike Pence, the Republican nominee for vice president.
And if the details of the Next Generation Hoosier Educator Scholarship sound familiar, they should. The program is not only patterned after the widely-acclaimed N.C. Teaching Fellows Program that the General Assembly abolished here in 2011, Indiana officials checked in with the staff of the Public School Forum of North Carolina that operated the Teaching Fellows program when designing the Indiana version. Forum President Keith Poston says he has been contacted by folks from numerous states.
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